My LR is corrupted - sort of

Well, the day finally came - my Lightroom catalog wouldn't start up for love nor money. No problem, I thought - I'll just use my last backup, which was only a couple of days old.

Uh oh... The backup catalog started up fine, but it couldn't find any of my photos. Seems that I switched out my c: drive in the interim, and even though neither my catalog nor my photos reside on the c: drive, the drive they ARE on was reassigned a new drive number ( from G: to H. I can relocate one folder at a time, but I have HUNDREDS of folders, so this is not an attractive option. Fortunately, the backup catalog retained all of my edits. Otherwise, I might consider suicide.

Long story short: does anyone know how to point a LR catalog to a whole new drive? What's frustrating is that the drive name is the same as it' seal ways been, only the drive letter has changed, so why doesn't LR recognize it?

Why dont you go into control panel and run disk management tool (assuming you are on a PC and not a mac). From there you can reassign the drive number back to G:

Did you check to make sure your most recent catalog wasn't just locked? Go to the folder with the catalog and check for a file right next to it labeled lrcat.lock. If there is one there deleting it will open that catalog back up.

It should be quite simple to "point" your catalog/folders to the new location. In the Library module, right-click on the "old" folder (in the C drive) and try choosing to "Update Folder Location" and just point to the new folder and that should work. Let us know!

For future reference, co-ordinate with Lightroom when you want to mess with your system/pics!

In the old G drive display select the highest parent folder, the one that contains all your photos. Reassign that to H and LR will find all the subfolders within it.

tonylong wrote in post #17157419
It should be quite simple to "point" your catalog/folders to the new location. In the Library module, right-click on the "old" folder (in the C drive) and try choosing to "Update Folder Location" and just point to the new folder and that should work. Let us know!

For future reference, co-ordinate with Lightroom when you want to mess with your system/pics!

Yay! Crisis averted; your suggestion worked, although on my version the item is called "Find Missing Folder".

This little episode has made me ponder the mortality of my edits, which number in the tens of thousands. Do most folks save their metadata back to the image files, or do you just make so many copies and backups that one is likely to work if a catastrophe occurs? I have one whole disk backup and one whole disk clone, as well as every backup catalog that Lightroom has ever made, but I still felt queasy when this "event" occurred.

Just realize: Lightroom does not change your original Raw files. It saves edits/changes to the catalog/metadata for those images. Yes, you can "goof things up" like you did and then go back to re-set things, but it's better to use Lightroom. For instance, you can use LR to move folders/files from one drive to another, a simple drag-and-drop, no muss and no fuss.

Take some time to work through some of the Lightroom tutorials and primers, you will learn stuff!!

A drive crash and the loss of my LR catalog (and backups) made me realize that I wasn't taking that data seriously enough. I still have all of my images, but the edits are gone for thousands of images.

Backup that catalog to another drive (and better still, off site with your images).

Snafoo wrote in post #17157774
Yay! Crisis averted; your suggestion worked, although on my version the item is called "Find Missing Folder".

This little episode has made me ponder the mortality of my edits, which number in the tens of thousands. Do most folks save their metadata back to the image files, or do you just make so many copies and backups that one is likely to work if a catastrophe occurs? I have one whole disk backup and one whole disk clone, as well as every backup catalog that Lightroom has ever made, but I still felt queasy when this "event" occurred.

Have you checked yet to see if your initial catalog was locked? I know it's happened to me on more than one occasion.

Beyond that I don't save the edits to the image metadata, I save them to XMP sidecar files and just keep a backup.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #17157923
Beyond that I don't save the edits to the image metadata, I save them to XMP sidecar files and just keep a backup.

If you are working with CR2 files (or any other proprietary files) LR can't save edits to the file metadata, only DPP can do that for CR2s, so the save has to be to a separate external XMP. The save to the active catalog file is automatic, immediate and continuous. If you are working with dngs, tifs, psds, or jpgs the XMP is internal, so it is saved in the file metadata.

tzalman wrote in post #17157947
If you are working with CR2 files (or any other proprietary files) LR can't save edits to the file metadata, only DPP can do that for CR2s, so the save has to be to a separate external XMP. The save to the active catalog file is automatic, immediate and continuous. If you are working with dngs, tifs, psds, or jpgs the XMP is internal, so it is saved in the file metadata.

I work exclusively with CR2, except for scanned images (prints, slides, and negatives). I don't mind saving to XMP if it means my edits won't be lost if my catalog goes belly up.

My catalog was not locked, it was definitely corruped.

FWIW, I do backup my stuff onto a separate drive with Acronis, and also clone to a separate disk (also using Acronis) and store off-site. But sometimes from pure laziness I let a week or two lapse between backups. I'll be more diligent in the future.

Thanks for all your help, guys.

tzalman wrote in post #17157947
If you are working with CR2 files (or any other proprietary files) LR can't save edits to the file metadata, only DPP can do that for CR2s, so the save has to be to a separate external XMP. The save to the active catalog file is automatic, immediate and continuous. If you are working with dngs, tifs, psds, or jpgs the XMP is internal, so it is saved in the file metadata.

Doh, brainfart. I meant saving the edits to catalog, not metadata. You have the option of either saving the edits to catalog, which means if you lose the catalogs you lose the edits, or you can use the XMP sidecars which are stored with the images, so if you lose the catalog you can still re-import both the images and the sidecar files with the edits (I've had to do that before).

tandemhearts wrote in post #17157908
A drive crash and the loss of my LR catalog (and backups) made me realize that I wasn't taking that data seriously enough. I still have all of my images, but the edits are gone for thousands of images.

Backup that catalog to another drive (and better still, off site with your images).

Good tip... and one of the major things I try to point out when working with LR. The catalog becomes nearly as important as the images themselves. I heard dropbox and some other services have increased their file-size limit... several years ago the limit for single file prohibited me from backing up my .lrcat files there... I need to look again to see if any can handle that.

In either case, I always include my LR folder when backing up my pictures externally. Sorry you had to learn it the hard way.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #17159052
Doh, brainfart. I meant saving the edits to catalog, not metadata. You have the option of either saving the edits to catalog, which means if you lose the catalogs you lose the edits, or you can use the XMP sidecars which are stored with the images, so if you lose the catalog you can still re-import both the images and the sidecar files with the edits (I've had to do that before).

The save to catalog is always done, the XMP is an optional addition.

davidcrebelxt wrote in post #17159090
Good tip... and one of the major things I try to point out when working with LR. The catalog becomes nearly as important as the images themselves. I heard dropbox and some other services have increased their file-size limit... several years ago the limit for single file prohibited me from backing up my .lrcat files there... I need to look again to see if any can handle that.

Google Drive gives a free 15 GB. That's where my backups go.

Snafoo wrote in post #17158928
....But sometimes from pure laziness I let a week or two lapse between backups.

I had the same problem. I had back-ups, just not regular ones. I just installed an automatic back-up utility (Crashplan in my case but I would think Acronis may do the same thing). It is set to automatically monitor certain folders and back-up to an external drive on a regular basis (every 15 minutes) when files are added/edited. The automatic nature of it means I never have to worry about it.

I currently have it set to Never remove files that are deleted. That way accidental deletion of files from my system wont be a problem. At some point I may clone that drive and then set the backup to remove deleted files.

It also allows you to backup to their servers (for a fee) or to a hard drive at a friends house (free).